Two years ago for the 10th anniversary Sony came out with the mission “Dragons, Dragons, Dragons” which sent you through instanced versions of Norrath zones to defeat the dragon population one at a time. Each one of these dragons is a raid encounter, and there are 20 of them in total to defeat. Each year of the anniversary Sony brings back these quests for players to attempt – and this year was my first year being able to participate. The rewards are two different augments. One is based on the age of your account, and the second one is based on the number of dragons you defeat. Both of them were upgrades to me not to mention the fact that I had a blast working my way through the old world encounters.
First up was Lord Nagafen, with 32k hp he barely stood a chance, along with Lady Vox who came next. I defeated these on live server not all that long ago when Nostalgia the Guild was making the rounds, so I wasn’t really having any squeals of delight at the time. After that came a dracoliche, which was in the actual version of Fear along with all of the mobs that swarmed us. Not a difficult fight, but annoying to find our way out of. Gorenaire, Trakanon, and Phara Dar all fell with ease. Then we started meeting dragons I had never seen before on live servers Like Lord Yelinak and Vulak’Aerr. My ‘wow’ moment came while defeating The Four warders of Sleeper’s Tomb (although not the sleeper himself) because I had never been in the zone before. Finally we came to Quarm who was by far the most impressive looking dragon creature I had seen all night. Each little bit you DPS him down causes one of his heads to explode until he’s left with just one. There are adds, and of course in true Sony manor the dragon fights are belly fights (as I quickly remembered when not a single one of my spells would land from range).
The 11th dragon is Kessdona the Enlightened and this was where we met our wall. See, this dragon replenishes its health via 4 stone statues that stand all around it during the fight. Your job is to defeat the proper statue that the dragon is using to siphon the health. The only way to figure out which one of the four statues it is, is to bring someone who can track. The one that shows up on track is the proper statue. Not incredibly difficult unless you’re a monk and a necromancer with a cleric and warrior mercenary attempting these raid encounters. If that happens to be the case, well. We spent a lot of time trying to guess which statue it was and some times we were correct but all it takes is one incorrect guess and the dragon would move from 50% health to 99% health. Ugh.
Still, I’m pleased with all of our progress. It was a lot of fun and the rewards were still nice for the amount we accomplished. We have gotten a few guild invites to defeat the rest of the dragons, so we may just go along with that and see how far we can get.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! I’ll see you in Norrath.